Missing daughter meets her mother 50 years later

IT'S an emotional and very heart-warming story of how a young Mackay mother gave up her firstborn for adoption only to be reunited with her more than 50 years later.

Ronda Jackson is now 86 and one of 15 children born to the McDonald family who lived in Bridge Rd.

While working on an island in the Great Barrier Reef she fell in love with a handsome Proserpine man who also worked there.

Ronda fell pregnant and due to the circumstances of the time, she made the very difficult decision to travel to Sydney to give birth to her daughter. The baby was immediately adopted out to a loving family and went on to have a happy life unaware of her adoption.

Ronda became happily married and had her own family, but over the years there was always a piece of her life that was missing.

At times her thoughts made her wonder about her firstborn child.

Many years later her daughter, after accidentally discovering that she had been adopted, began a search to find her mother.

The search took 20 years until one day Ronda's "missing" daughter arrived on her North Mackay home.